We need more Xara LX users! Attached current project

[darkerlink]

I read alot of people talking about GIMP and Inkscape. Where is all the Xara users? I personally use it and I love it. I think the more people use it, the more/faster the developers will update it. Currently, the xara xtreme 4 for windows can export whole projects into html web pages with WYSIWYG and the linux version cannot. Here's a project I've been working on. Going to update a friend's website with a fresh new design. She is an artist. http://madammeow.com/

Here is my mockup.

Topleft is the logo, squares under it will be clickable link. Big text area box udner it. To the right is a picture and under it will be 9 square links to change the pictures. What do you guys think?

[Half-Left]

Xara is nice but last time I used it, svg was not working(and quiet a few other features) and thats pretty useless to me and alot who need it.

[smartboyathome]

Also, its pretty much a dead project. I think it last had a release right after it was made open source. Not to mention I can do everything I need to in Inkscape, and it can be viewed inside a web browser correctly since it follows SVG standards (Xara doesn't :().

[banago]

I am very happy with Inkscape. As for exporting to html, it gets imports to table so that it does not help for nothing. I code valid tableless xhtml/css only.

[aragilar]

How come Xara LX is in the multiverse category if its licenced under the GPL?:-|

[twright]

How come Xara LX is in the multiverse category if its licenced under the GPL?:-|
Whilst the interface of Xara LX is GPL it relies on a core library which is closed source; that is what killed the project, many developers refused to work with it and Xara withdrew support in response. Xara could have never released the source for that library as its amazing speed is the thing which sets it apart from the competition and by the time the remaining developers started porting to Cairo most of the support had gone so the project is now dead :-(.

[darkerlink]

That is very sad indeed. I still dual boot for the purpose of using xara xtreme pro. I've found the 3d extrude tool to be very cool and the speed of xara is still light years compared to illustrator. Sad :(

[smartboyathome]

I might use Xara if it could export fairly well to SVG. Its got horrible SVG support though. :(

[lyceum]

I started learning svg with Xara, but once it died, Inkscape out did it pretty quick, IMO. I would love to use Xara, if they ever start working on it again, maybe I will switch back, but I got projects much faster in Inkscape.

[darkerlink]

I might use Xara if it could export fairly well to SVG. Its got horrible SVG support though. :(


I just did a test just now. First, I exported an image into svg with inkscape. No errors and I could see it and open it with imageviewer. Then I tried it with xara lx but image viewer could not open it or preview the thumbnail. I logged into my windows xp partition and exported a simple image in xara xtreme pro into svg and sent it to myself via e-mail. Relogged onto my ubuntu partition and downloaded the files. The svg files exported from xara xtreme pro now could be seen via image viewer and the thumbnails can now be viewed from the desktop.

So TLDR version:
It does have good svg support... if linux got the xtreme pro (aka updated version).

What inkscape has that xara doesn't have are the tweek, spiral, and renders. Xara has the bevel, contour, shadow, and the blend tool. While I could live without the renders and spiral, the tweek tool is what I'd love to see on xara and all the stuff xara has, especially the blend tool, is what I'd like to see on inkscape. Oh, and also the speed of xara.

[lwhitmore]

I love Xara LX.. it's gradient fill, and transparency tools are brilliant - and because each tool's function curve can be tweaked, I found it gave a very high level of control. The interactivity (you can drag and the view updates realtime), made the creation of designs a very fluid process for me.

I REALLY WISH I COULD PAY FOR THIS PROGRAM!

I would gladly pay £70-£100 to have the full version available on Linux. I'm really sad that the project lost momentum.

I don't blame Xara for not releasing the code for their render engine.. they have to remain competitive - and as I understood it, this part of the program == their crown jewel. Perhaps the open-source community can be a little over-zealous sometimes?

In my opinion - Xara should have paid for one or two developers to work with the open source team, or at least have ensured that some of their team could devote time to the project a regular basis. Perhaps this might have avoided the common assumption that they were using open source developers? It's all very well supporting open-source, but sometimes a company will have to put money where it's mouth is.

Actually, I've just upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 - and Xara seems broken... has anyone else found this??

[darkerlink]

also having xara holding me back to using windows, I would also gladly pay their 89 dollar to have a linux version. I had 8.10 and have only had problems with it. since reverting to 7.10, everything is fine. Opposite problem for me. Inkscape is really buggy for me. top bar gets hidden/rehidden everytime i click it, making it impossible to work with while maximized. Also it leaves artifacts on the screen when I use the tweek tool.

[lwhitmore]

After a couple of uses I decided I didn't like inkscape much, I'm already missing xara.

I don't want to go back to 7.10 .. seems like it would be a lot of trouble. But I've also noticed that nicotine+ isn't working... gah.

Was reverting to 7.10 pretty straightforward?

[smartboyathome]

After a couple of uses I decided I didn't like inkscape much, I'm already missing xara.

I don't want to go back to 7.10 .. seems like it would be a lot of trouble. But I've also noticed that nicotine+ isn't working... gah.

Was reverting to 7.10 pretty straightforward?

You have to reinstall to get 7.10. :(

[lwhitmore]

Thanks for the information.

I suppose I should find out why some applications don't work with 8.10, rather than revert to a previous version. I definitely don't want to have to reinstall.

I think it might have sometime to do with the new version of X that's used... if I find out anything I'll add it to this thread.

[lyceum]

I don't blame Xara for not releasing the code for their render engine.. they have to remain competitive - and as I understood it, this part of the program == their crown jewel. Perhaps the open-source community can be a little over-zealous sometimes?

That is the whole point of FOSS. If they released that code it could have been even better. They could have used a dual licence not allowing forks or something. If you are paying for it you should be able to do what you want with it. Personally, I think the world is backwards. We should get proprietary programs free, as we are just renting or borrowing someone else's stuff and we can't mess with or break it. FOSS should come at a fee as once it is on your system you OWN it, you can do what ever you want to it!

[lwhitmore]

That is the whole point of FOSS. If they released that code it could have been even better. They could have used a dual licence not allowing forks or something. If you are paying for it you should be able to do what you want with it. Personally, I think the world is backwards. We should get proprietary programs free, as we are just renting or borrowing someone else's stuff and we can't mess with or break it. FOSS should come at a fee as once it is on your system you OWN it, you can do what ever you want to it!

I see your point. I think we're in a transition period - and our economic models need to shift... we've grown up in an society where scarcity defines how much something is worth, but this model doesn't work well for intellectual property - because IP is, by it's very nature, infinitely abundant; eg. you can create as many copies as you want.

I don't think it's fair to create code / music or typography and expect perpetual financial gain from it - and this is my main problem with copyright.

I think that software is, and should be, a service industry. Companies and coders should be paid for the amount of time they spend on a project. In my opinion, the code itself shouldn't hold any financial value. If a company wants to restrict access to code - they should host it and allow people to purchase time on their system. (I.e. if it's closed source, don't let other people run it on their systems)

I guess the main problem with FOSS, is that it's more difficult for such an industry to be controlled by one or two major key players... which is great for society, but bad news for those Microsoft execs who've been suckling at the bosom of perpetual return all these years ;)

I'm completely in awe of the Blender project - the package is completely amazing. I think this project was developed from a proprietary product that was given an open-source licence.

I'd love it if Xara Xtreme was able to follow in it's example... but I'm not going to hold my breath.

[lyceum]

I see your point. I think we're in a transition period - and our economic models need to shift... we've grown up in an society where scarcity defines how much something is worth, but this model doesn't work well for intellectual property - because IP is, by it's very nature, infinitely abundant; eg. you can create as many copies as you want.

I don't think it's fair to create code / music or typography and expect perpetual financial gain from it - and this is my main problem with copyright.

I think that software is, and should be, a service industry. Companies and coders should be paid for the amount of time they spend on a project. In my opinion, the code itself shouldn't hold any financial value. If a company wants to restrict access to code - they should host it and allow people to purchase time on their system. (I.e. if it's closed source, don't let other people run it on their systems)

I guess the main problem with FOSS, is that it's more difficult for such an industry to be controlled by one or two major key players... which is great for society, but bad news for those Microsoft execs who've been suckling at the bosom of perpetual return all these years ;)

I'm completely in awe of the Blender project - the package is completely amazing. I think this project was developed from a proprietary product that was given an open-source licence.

I'd love it if Xara Xtreme was able to follow in it's example... but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Well said :)

[twright]

I have been learning programming for a while now, maybe sometime I will be able to have a look at Xara XL's code (no promises). If enough people want to help we might be able to catch some of the low hanging bugs (e.g. getting it to build against latest libraries). I personally would be willing to work with CDRaw but my experience is very limited so i would have to learn as i go (some C/C++, java and web stuff doing work experience at SUN; this would be the first open source project i would have worked on and of course i don't have infinite free time). I might concentrate on setting up a project on launchpad/google code/whereever if i get any support

[lwhitmore]

I'd be interested in helping - but this would be my first experience working on an open source project. Maybe I could help out with things like documentation? I've some experience with C++ but I'm not very experienced. Would definitely like to help if I can.

[Samhain13]

Personally, I think the world is backwards. We should get proprietary programs free, as we are just renting or borrowing someone else's stuff and we can't mess with or break it. FOSS should come at a fee as once it is on your system you OWN it, you can do what ever you want to it!

A bit OT already but I have to say that this is an interesting thought, and I very much agree with it. :D

[twright]

hi,
I have created a project here and am uploading the old source:
http://code.google.com/p/xarino/

altogether the code seems to be in quite good shape, I will see how well it builds and what i can do to start improving it. For now i will also spend some more time reading up on c++ + wx widgets, if anyone else wants to help could they try starting to submit bugs (preferably with any output necessary to debug/locate source) to the google code project; also wishlists would be helpful (but anything advanced might be outside of the scope of my skills). Some people willing to package it might help in the long run. We could maybe do with some docs to at some point.

Finally some notes about my plans; all i am working on is being renamed to xarino (so i don't get sued, if anyone can think of a better name please post) and I am working of the CDraw version not the cairo as that is more stable and faster.

[lwhitmore]

Do you think it would be worth posting a message about your plans on the original xara developers board? I was reading through the final posts (made around April 08 ), and it seemed that there were a few people who were keen to help develop XaraLX, but the organisation was lacking, so perhaps they just gave up.

Perhaps more people would be willing to try and help out with this new fork?

BTW I like the name.

[larpon]

Just a post here to encourage your idea and your efforts so far... Xara's user experience and interface is like no other vector (maybe even photoeditor) application out there...

Bring the most streamlined workflow you can possibly imagine to life again...

Remember to read the mail archives before diving into the code... They have some good information on what kind of problem(s) they had back then.

btw... I have a working xara running on my kubuntu box
(hardy Ubuntu 8.04.1)
It has no stability problems from what I've experienced.
I got it from a compiled debian package some guy released.
afaik it's based on the latest svn commit.

--edit
I'll see if I can find the original .deb package

--edit
Here we go.. these are the ones I installed:
xaralx_0.7r1785-2_i386.deb
xaralx-examples_0.7r1785-2_all.deb
xaralx-svg_0.7r1785-2_i386.deb

I can't remember where I originally got them from but google found some with the same names here:
http://ftp.man.poznan.pl/pub/linux/debian/debian/pool/non-free/x/xaralx/
(amd64 bit versions as well)

[darkerlink]

I would be more than happy to test it. Sorry, I have no programming experience. A few things I would already improve upon is the "on the fly" text preview that you get on the windows xtreme pro version that was not available on the xaralx version. I am so glad people are having such interest in this project. Much of what made xara popular is it's speed and responsive feedback you get from the tools. I believe the text preview was being worked on but was never finished. It seems most people here left xara because of lack of svg support. I, personally still use it because of it's eps support but I might have to export into svg in the future. If svg is the future of web graphics, implimenting it on xara(xarino) would surely give it a good marketshare.

btw: I like the name Xarino.

[larpon]

If svg is the future of web graphics, implimenting it on xara(xarino) would surely give it a good marketshare.

btw: I like the name Xarino.

I second that...

I can program and have had serious thoughts about digging into the code of Xara/CDRAW but as of now I'm simply too busy with other things.. If this project is still around sometime next year I'd might be tempted to give it a go...

Also, one of the issues of the development halt on xara was afaik the fact that you as an active developer were bound to sign a contributor's agreement..
I guess most people are not happy about signing anything as long as they're contributing things they do in their sparetime.. The agreement were (as I recall it) pretty liberal but still.
see the top bit on: http://xaraxtreme.org/Developers/developers-licensing-a-contributing.html

the link to the further reading is dead now so I wonder if they changed their mind at some point.

Inkscape is a very cool and attractive project imho but as long as cairo is as slow as it is now it's not usable for larger graphical projects yet.

I use soft shadowing for a lot of my drawings and if I add around 12 objects with heavy blur/feathering it causes Inkscape to stall for up to 30 seconds every time you zoom or move the view...
This makes it unbearable to work with on larger projects and unacceptable given it's running on a dual core 3GHz pentium.

I've heard somewhere that the cairo developers are trying to get the lib working with graphic card acceleration... now this would improve everything big time but I could be misinformed on this (rumor).

[lwhitmore]

One feature that I think would be nice (that might be quite simple to implement), is the ability to paste text into Xara from the clipboard. AFAIK this isn't possible at the moment.

[larpon]

One feature that I think would be nice (that might be quite simple to implement), is the ability to paste text into Xara from the clipboard. AFAIK this isn't possible at the moment.

Funny you should mention it...
I've just spend a good couple of hours trying to figure out how to get the superscript TM (™) pasted into xara.. no luck and I can't find the right keyboard combination either..

So I ended up with just making a new text element and give it 1/6 the size of the other text.

So this would be a good feature indeed.

[lwhitmore]

hi,
I have created a project here and am uploading the old source:
http://code.google.com/p/xarino/

altogether the code seems to be in quite good shape, I will see how well it builds and what i can do to start improving it. For now i will also spend some more time reading up on c++ + wx widgets, if anyone else wants to help could they try starting to submit bugs (preferably with any output necessary to debug/locate source) to the google code project; also wishlists would be helpful (but anything advanced might be outside of the scope of my skills). Some people willing to package it might help in the long run. We could maybe do with some docs to at some point.

Finally some notes about my plans; all i am working on is being renamed to xarino (so i don't get sued, if anyone can think of a better name please post) and I am working of the CDraw version not the cairo as that is more stable and faster.

I tried to compile xaralx using the google code project source, but a lot of the subdirectories are empty.

Could you confirm whether all the code has been uploaded to the xarino google code project yet?

[lwhitmore]

In case anyone's interested, I found this link to the code documentation...

http://downloads.xara.com/opensource/doxygen/html/index.html

[twright]

Hi,
I am just posting to update you as to the project of the Xarino project:


I am currently very buzy with exams but as soon as they quieten down I will spend some more time looking at the code and getting some real work done.
There is no need for an agreement when contributing to Xarino unlike XaraLX, you can just submit patches or PM me your email address so I can add you to the project letting you submit directly to the SVN repo. As the project has now been forked we have now got no offical connection with Xara (the have probably forgotten about the Linux port anyway by now).
I have posted a message to the XaraLX mailing list but I am not sure it still work, I will also look to see whether there is any activity in any of the related forums.
We are currently working to populate the bug tracker with some basic issues which it should not be too impossible to work through, if anyone wants to have a look feel free; as noone on the current team has much programming experience don't feel that if you don't have a lot yourself that your contribution is not valuable.
All of the code has now been uploaded and is in the repo.